China has blocked its residents from using Twitter — along with Facebook and others — inside the mainland since 2009. In response to speculation that China would interfere with Twitter under Musk’s leadership, China’s foreign ministry issued a denial.
Tesla founder Elon Musk’s $44 billion bid to buy Twitter has led to a wave of concern that Tesla’s rapid expansion in China will make Twitter TWTR, -0.18% more vulnerable to pressure from the Chinese government.
Bezos was, in fact, one of the first people to express unease with the bid. Responding to a reporter’s tweet about Tesla’s business relationship with China and Twitter being banned there, Bezos wrote: “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?”The Chinese government has blocked its residents from using Twitter — along with Facebook, Instagram FB, -2.56%, Google GOOG, -3.72% and even Wikipedia — inside mainland China since 2009.
In order to increase transparency and cut down on propaganda — and disinformation and fake news — Twitter flags accounts belonging to Chinese government officials’ and Chinese state-affiliated media, an approach applied to media outlets that the platform regards as lacking editorial independence. Still, observers wondered whether Musk’s long-time ties with the Chinese government would be a threat to the integrity of the social-media platform, including whether the company would remove state-affiliated media labels or — in a worst-case scenario — even remove negative China-related content or accounts.
“They wouldn’t use it as a bargaining chip unless they have to,” Fang wrote in an online newsletter this week. While the Chinese government clamps down on social-media at home — deleting controversial posts and restricting accounts on its in-land Twitter equivalent, Weibo — observers noted that China would be skittish about opening its internet up to Twitter.
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